


Meltdown at Tate & Lyle

by Woollymitts



Category: Holby City
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9679349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woollymitts/pseuds/Woollymitts
Summary: Place to keep all the random Berena domestic fluff I seem to have written and buried. Not that Fanfic is a strong point. Much prefer old fashioned letter writing with pen and ink and quirky memoir; rewriting history in the hall of mirrors. Oh shit I sound like Jenny Schechter. Eviscerated, am I. Always up for more pen pals.





	1. Waifs & Strays

Iona herself only remembers a few images from the day they found it. She herself was only a few months old herself. Her nose catching on a frozen puddle; her favourite mix of wet grass, grit and mud between her toes; and that thing that caught her attention the most. It came as a gamey thrilling wisp at first and she pulled hard at her leash whining and desperate to find it source.

"Hold your horses" muttered her owner, cigarette between her teeth, she hears the familiar hiss, click, flare and long exhalation. A strong hand drops down and deftly releases her. 

No instruction required, Iona bounds down the canal path following the scent. She sees the red flash first. Like the bright red jumper the tallest human wore all week and the women in the house laughed and hugged him all the more for it. It's like the scents in the cracks between the floor and skirting board and the under the stair cupboard smell but so much more heady. Iona brings her nose to cordoruy brown and red matted fur and experimentally licks. Her tongue tells her more. Beetles and worms have been here as well as another creature. A top note of urine; sharp and citrus. Cat. Heavy footsteps approach. 

Ugh, think both. But while her owner stands above staring at the dead rabbit, Iona is onto the new scent and it leads her into a small scrubland, littered with abandoned domestic detritus. The scent is stronger now with an edge of sweat and fear. 

What occurs next is in a blur as she skids up to an abandoned washing machine drum she hears a small yowl. Then her nose is gushing with her own blood and saliva. She whelps ducking down under the drum where her owner finds her whimpering. 

"Been in the wars I see" she admonishes. 

"And what, or should I say, who is this?"

A hand dips in the drum while Iona lets out a warning bark. A small grey bundle is fished out. The creature squirms a while and then goes limp. Iona's owner brings the kitten up to her face, observes it cooly and raises her eyes to the surrounding area with the same careful appraisal. A decision is made and Bernie drops the kitten almost casually into the outer pocket of her waxed jacket. Riding pillion thus, they continue onto the house.

Serena is curled up nodding off on the sofa. A half-finished crossword in her lap.

"Mmm, hello there, Boozy Snoozy,"

Bernie saunters over unwrapping her scarf and kneels down on the rug beside her. Iona pads up and tucks her head enquiringly under Bernie's elbow. Serena's kiss is languid and she shudders a little, feeling a tell-tale squirm in her belly, Serena glances down Bernie's coat. 

"Did you borrow my hat for your walk?. Oh Bernie you know you shouldn't treat it like that."

The hat wriggles. Bernie blushes. 

"I got distracted and forgot I had a guest riding shotgun." 

She proffers the now sleeping kitten on a large hand. Like a diffident magus, ready to snatch it back should the gift be deemed unworthy. 

Serena looks on astonished. The Major apparently was getting soft. A situation like the one presented to her would normally had just involved an short phone call to the RSPCA.

"I didn't want to bother a charity. They'd have their hands full at this time of year... " 

Bernie trails off. Serena looks at Iona who thumps a tattoo of approval with her tail on the wooden floor, brown eyes adoring. Her collection of waifs and strays looking on at her. 

"One week" 

A week becomes a fortnight because the stray refuses to eat. Bernie offers her dog food, bits of leftover Christmas turkey, stuffing balls and pigs in blankets. All is resolutely refused. 

"You're spoiling it" Serena raises an eyebrow 

"Well, you can't have her looking like we put her on half-rations," said Bernie, slightly defensive. 

Instead the cat escounces herself under the kitchen table refusing to budge from that place. It isn't until the New Year's party, when a thoroughly cheesed off kitten sulks, aggravated as formerly quiet kitchen is full of noisy human talking and laughter. 

She peers at the dozens of shoes surrounding her island. Some of the glittery ones look almost worth chasing down if she didn't feel so lethargic. A particularly pair draw her attention. Leopardskin tilted at the heel and then a "drat".

A creamy morsel falls to the floor. It looks like a dab of butter. The kitten tongues it cautiously. Delicious bird butter. She now begins to eat rapaciously. Serena bends down looking for the canapé she has dropped from the serving platter. She sees she has been anticipated. 

"Mmh. Expensive tastes. Interesting". 

Serena's eyes find Bernie who wordlessly reaches over the table to take the tray off her hands but not before Serena herself removes one crostini. She scoops up the kitten with its tiny heart beating rapidly between its rib cage, fur and not much between, she feels. Raising up the canapé, the kitten licks at her minute meal enthusiastically. 

"Well, I never, foie gras. Who'd have thought it? Only the finest. Just like her mother." 

Bernie grins and catching Serena's eye says one word which is immediately understood and Serena nods her assent, 

"Pechinku."


	2. Christmas dinner

They are arranged stiffly like marionettes around the dining table. Cam and Charlotte are sitting together scrunched conspiratorially. A hostile phalanx thinks Elinor. She is outnumbered and out-ranked. Jesus, even the son is a mini-Serena with a medical degree and sucking up to her and his own mum on the ward. As for the other one, bloody doing PPE at Oxford and probably a shoe-in for the fucking Foreign Office or UN, worse luck. She feels frivolous and out of place. 

"What do you think of Chilcott?" Elinor throws out the random question in the space between scraping cutlery and polite coughs that had made up the first ten minutes of their Christmas meal. 

Charlotte takes a long look at her mother and responds. 

"Just another means of booting a scandal into the long grass," she starts nonchalantly. 

"Leaving it a decade to report so that time makes the outcome so adonyne. No muss and not much fuss."

"That's a little cynical" says Bernie slowly. She take a long swallow, "Someone had to be out there to pick up the pieces."

"But what was the actual point of soldiers getting blown to smithereens?" said Charlotte a little hotly. She picks up her wine glass and twisting the stem begins to warm to the theme. It comes out in an angry rush. 

"Mother dearest, and other honourable types, rushed to war thinking the opposition would play fair. They were bloody idiots. The enemy was much more an ideology than a conventional army and a shape-shifting one at that. You might as well as have shot bullets at ghosts for all the good it did us as a nation. It laid waste so many young people for no good reason."

Bernie looks down at her plate knowing full well all that was left unsaid. Her deployment in Helmand was time stolen from Charlotte's childhood and even at eleven she was able to express the emotional cost with unerring accuracy. Long letters from boarding school telling her mother how miserable the experience was and that Bernie herself was absent without her daughter's leave. It appears that her bright articulate girl could still calculate the value of her mother deserting her family duties now as then. 

"Well this is cheerful", thinks Elinor. She is warmed a little by wine and schadenfreude in seeing that Charlotte seemed no further along in understanding the motivations of her own mother than she of hers. 

"Maybe it's generational", speculates Elinor causing Bernie to purse her lips into a thin line and cease eating. 

The meal continues with a stilted conversation about the Elinor's journey from Cambridge of little interest to anyone bar Jason who was keen to find out exactly what train type conveyed her home. A question Elinor is quite unable to answer. 

Unperturbed and efficient as ever Jason finishes his main course informing Auntie Serena that the Christmas Dr Who special was to begin in two minutes. He reminds the company present that he had sought special dispensation from Serena to have pudding later in order that he not miss the beginning. 

As leaves the room, there is a lacuna. Neither Serena or Bernie can think of much to say. Serena runs through a number of inane conversation openings but her daughter's glower makes her hesitate. 

There's a yelp at the other end of the table. Charlotte smacks her hand involuntarily on side of her bowl and makes the spoon jump up and clatter against the china. Bernie rises out of her chair all concern (also half hoping for a trip to ED to escape the interminable meal). 

"Charlotte, what's the matter?"

"S, nothing" but she winces again almost gargling on half-mashed Christmas pudding. 

Unperturbed, her brother keeps eating. "I think we found the sixpence."

"Nf! And my half broken crown, you little shit". 

Bernie sits back down wearily on her seat. 

"As I've said a thousand times it was an accident. If you hadn't been running in the house..." said Cameron quite unbothered by his sister's outburst. 

"N i'phew adn't jump on th top bunk aft' stlin my cuwey wryly." She is trying to enunciate but it all comes out through gritted teeth. 

"And if you hadn't slammed my fingers in the kitchen door" retorts her brother. 

"Care to elaborate Cameron?" Serena had returned from the kitchen with a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel. Both Wolfe women look up from below their tousled fringes; grateful relief in the eyes of Charlotte but additionally tinged with bashful guilt in Bernie's. Serena is struck again by their similarity in expression. 

Applying himself to the coffee pot, Cameron explains, "Madre's first posting was Ramstein assisting the training of US medical officers in trauma. I was ten and sis eight. We had to share a room. A pine bunk bed to be precise. We got a stash of Cadburys from home, courtesy of grandma. Charlotte got it into her tiny mind that all the curly wurlies were hers. I begged to differ and scooted onto my top bunk with the contraband. I couldn't help it if she came at me full pelt and smashed her face into said bed." 

"And several sessions of expensive orthodontic care later, she still has to be gentle with it," adds Bernie leaning over and rubbing Charlotte's back consolingly. 

"So not worth it," she moans, "but Heinz-gate..."

At this, Cameron sputters. "The best scheme ever. Mum used to pull rank on junior officers and make them babysit us." 

"Her and Dad were at one of those formal messes they have every half year and it was the turn of Julia, this mousy nursing aux," he continues. 

Charlotte chortles, "I'd been saving for six months for a massive payout from the tooth fairy."

The Wolfe cubs told their story in practised tandem neither missing a beat. 

"And I convinced you to put your teeth in your mouth with a spoonful of ketchup." 

"And when Julia told us to go to sleep we started to pretend fight. We'd been learning taekwondo all summer."

"I pretend kicked Charlotte in the face and she spat out all six teeth on the living room carpet and screamed."

"Disgusting," says Elinor only mildly appalled. Her mother blanches rather more and looks at Bernie for confirmation. She smiles at her weakly. 

"Except it was only five as you had accidentally swallowed a tooth and then you started screaming properly" 

"I was hysterical. I'd just lost out on 50 pence. Thanks to your dodgy scheme, Cam."

At this point, Charlotte starts to laugh outright, half honking in gleeful protestation. Elinor is so alarmed by her noisy outburst she giggles in surprise. They look at each other. A moment of youthful understanding in, for once, upstaging their mothers. 

"And Mum's face" Cam wipes the tears away from his eyes.

"When she came home. She threatened to ground me until I went back to school in September."

"No one would babysit for us after that stunt" concluded Bernie slinking further down her chair as she pours a liberal shot of whiskey into her coffee. 

As she replaces the decanter on the table it is swiftly taken up by her son. She tipped her head back questioningly and he just shrugs his shoulders and passes it onto Serena who similarly doses her cup. 


	3. Millinery of sorts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What to do on two long haul flights? Apparently eat weird non Bombay mix and write fluff that would stick in any healthy person's craw. You have been warned. Don't come to me if you cough up hairballs for a week. 

Bernie loathed hats. From the time when her mother almost pushed her off the top of a cairn on a Welsh walking holiday. She seethed with frustration that her youngest and usually most gung ho daughter had not stop whinging all morning. 

Not that Bernie was a noisy child when upset, but she was prone to inexplicably dour moods. She had dampened the family's jovial mood with stoically shed tears observed through mizzled view of her mother's spectacles. Bernie was as downhearted as the rainclouds that were scudding haphazardly but inevitably toward them. An attempt to improve the emotional temperature of her four year old, citing a warm fire and the hotel's cockerpoo to hug, had failed. Bernie adamantly refused to join in with her older sisters' singing and scrambling along the pathway. 

Finally, when Cordelia sank her gaitered knee into the muddy path they were traversing, Bernie spoke three words through the side of her mouth barely discernible above the steady dripping of rain against her bright yellow mackintosh. "I hate wool." The passionate vehemence from her usually quietest daughter stunned her mother. 

Raising her hand up, Cordelia removed the offending brown and orange knitted pom pom hat. "It itches," a simple and plain explanation of Bernie's occasional wayward temperament. The screaming and wriggling as a toddler when jammed in the middle seat that made Sunday car trips a misery. The endless fidgeting through sermons in their family pew despite her father's stern glances in her direction. 

At school, her end of year reports were let down consistently by her poor deportment and untidiness. Her house mistress commented drily, "Berenice appears to lose her boater on numerous occasions. Once it was found on the bell tower's pinnacle. She claims it flew up in a gale." 

Miss Howson was well aware that the roof gable was the location of boarders' smoking eyrie. But having once encountered a climbing Berenice (with a substantial block of cheese tucked into her blouse) while the housemistress herself was trying to slip back onto school grounds post curfew, she decided that discretion was the better part of valour. Especially, after being assisted up by the athletic boarder onto the ledge of junior common room windows, the only ones in the school without locks. 

Early on in the RAMC, Bernie had hated the way her navy blue beret made her stand out on the train home. She often wanted to just gaze out of the window unpicking her and Marcus' puzzling transformation from solid easy friendship to something more definite to him but oddly nebulous to her. Although not strictly allowed, she would remove the beret from her head pretending to shape it to make herself less conspicuous. This rarely worked as her heavy pack and fatigues were enough for even the most doltish of fellow passengers to notice her. She never once put it down to her physical attractiveness, always blaming the uniform. Resigned, she found herself making polite conversation with over eager fellow passengers as the rolling hills of the southwest sped by. 

When her mother was well enough to meet her at the station, Bernie would alight on the platform and find herself bending down to this once formidable woman. Cordelia's gimlet eye always fell upon the beret and raising or lowering it to the regulation inch above Bernie's left eyebrow her hand would hover over the felted wool and in benediction she would say, "your father would have been so proud." Then she would lower her arm uselessly to her side. Bernie would proffer an elbow and helped her shuffle toward the Volvo. In her family, small gestures stood in place of words. 

When Marcus and her were engaged, there was the episode forever known as Crowngate. She stalwartly refused to put on the hat in her Christmas cracker and the overly jolly Dunnes saw it as a means to tease her ruthlessly as unthinkingly cheerful people tend to do in packs. They were insistent that Christmas would not be proper and complete without the unanimous donning of coloured tissue paper crowns at the dinner table. 

Unable to provide an adequate explanation for her antipathy to being thus doffed, she claimed a headache and stomped up to Marcus' room to sleep it off. He crept up and snuggling into her back upon his too narrow childhood bed they agreed never to hold each other to an ultimatum. A promise he kept for twenty five years. 

The Kevlar helmet worn even in the Khandahar's summer months was the most unbearable. But having seen so many cases of death and brain damage from soldiers caught by both deliberate and stray bullets, who had just momentarily removed them to scratch a persistent itch; she kept it on firmly placed in combat situations, although her head burned and she could barely see for the sweat running down over her lashes and nose. 

The only head wear she could bear was the cool clean cotton of her surgical caps. Army issued; the plainer and more unremarkable the blue the better. Along with the mask, her victims in their agony often didn't recognise who was butchering their limbs or was elbow deep into their guts when high on morphine and adrenaline. Her unruly and distinctive hair was tidied away into bland anonymity. 

It was therefore her favourite perk of being a civilian that there was no need, bar her surgical caps, to wear anything on her head. So she let the gusty wind that permanently blew around the looming hospital buildings ruffle and play with her hair. Even on days with the heaviest rain she preferred to shake the worst off as she stepped into the reception and preferred a hot black coffee over any headwear when it snowed. 

But here she finds herself, indoors of all places, in front of a blazing fire and her long legs stretched out on the sofa wearing a most notable head dress. Her fashion accessory has her children howling. She can't decide whether it is a result of too much rosé at lunch or whether the novelty of their mother thus attired that is so thoroughly amusing to them. They sit opposite her clutching at other and their stomachs. 

"I fail to see what is so very funny?"

In an armchair to her right, Serena leans forward and beams at her. 

"I think you should start a second verse." she informs her. 

Charlotte protests that she already has a stitch and doesn't think she can take much more. Her brother's pleasant baritone is heard and a few bars further in Serena harmonises. 

" Hey Jude, don't let me down  
You have found her, now go and get her  
Remember to let her into your heart  
Then you can start to make it better"

"So let it out and let it in, hey Jude, begin  
You're waiting for someone to perform with  
And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do  
The movement you need is on your shoulder "

They reach the bridge and at that point Bernie, who rarely remembers lyrics, is able to join in. 

"Nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah nah yeah"

But her approximation of singing is punctuated by yelps and ouches. The furry hat that adorns her head rebels at the noise and digs her claws into Bernie's scalp. 

"Mum. Pechinku hates your singing."

"Yes, she is letting me know. Ow, gerroff you little minx."

"Mum has to fight pussies off with a stick," roars Cam. Charlotte and Cam high five. 

"Oh is that so!" Berena mock glares, "At least, I'm doing better than you m'lad."

A warm hand settles on her socked feet, "And so she is, Cam," 

Brushing her hand up Bernie's leg and along her torso, Serena lifts the recalcitrant kitten off Bernie's head carefully removing stray blonde grey hairs off her glossy coat. She resettles Pechinku against the lightly snoring Iona. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In memory of our feline music critic, Jay-jay, who too hated Lennon and McCartney and would jump on my head if I dared to sing "Hey Jude". 


	4. All Girls In Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following up from Serena and Ellie's head girl statuses, I just can't resist playing a literary game. Spot the outrageous lifting from real life of plot bunnies amongst the made up shit.

Ellie dumps her handbag on the kitchen counter with a jangled thud. Serena raises an eyebrow as her daughter pulls out a bottle of prosecco from the fridge to which Ellie gives her a don't judge me face. 

First glass downed, she frowns at her mother and speaks. 

"Guess who I had a boozy lunch with?"

Serena list a couple of her on/off ex boyfriends and Ellie just flicks her hair in irritation. 

"Nope. I ran into someone at St Whinnyfers," her voice slips up an octave into an equine neigh as she pronounces her and her mother's alma mater. 

"I wish you wouldn't call it that", admonishes Serena. 

In the background, there's a responding whinny and some stamping and pawing. 

"Very funny, Bernie," says Serena but more indulgently. 

"Don't mind me. I'm just petting the dog and finishing the crossword" Bernie peers over her rimless reading glasses from her usual corner seat in the window, catching the last of the afternoon sun. Serena smiles at her fondly. 

"Oh for God's sake you two." Ellie then mutters under her breath, "It's like I'm surrounded," 

"Ok Ellie darling, who did you see?" Serena reverts her full attention back to her daughter. 

"So I was in town looking at this retrospective by Niki de St Phalle at the Arnolfini gallery for a piece I was planning to write, and who should I come across but Hermione Hatfield."

Serena goes through a mental Rolodex of her daughter's friends and acquaintances. Someone clicks, so she speculates, "Hermione, your deputy headgirl at school? I thought you hated her. Called her Hermione Hatstand for being rake thin and having no personality."

"Oh, she had a personality alright", snorted Ellie derisively, "as a total swot and for completely sucking up to the teachers". 

"Well, it turns out that the nickname was totally spot on. Hatstand was a total closet case at school. I just knew there was something going on with her and Victoria Godwin. But she was so uptight there was no way she was going to tell me..."

"Ouch," says her mother. 

Ellie waves her hand at her wafting a dismissive apology, keen to finish her story,

"Remember when I played Isabella at _Measure for Measure_ at Salisbury abbey. Well on the last night, Hatstand and Toria were there too sharing their picnic supper with none other than Trunchbull and some other woman."

"I just thought at the time what a creepster, she even has the nerve to socialise with the teachers. Little did I know that she was just a baby dyke getting some sapphic mentoring from the Head of English."

Serena looks a touch alarmed at that comment, 

p>

"Are we wading into dangerous territory?"

"Heavens no, Mum. Trunchball and her were purely platonic. However. " At this, she stops abruptly and stares at her empty glass. 

Serena takes the hint, refilling the bubbly and fetching a glass of her own. 

"Gawd. I can't believe I'm telling you this. It's so embarrassing, and well, never mind" and she lurches on pausing at the end of each sentence to gulp down more wine. 

"Hatstand denied there was anything going as she was too hung up on Toria. Always making doe eyes at that one. "

Serena was able to better remember the eighteen year old. Rather tall and any willow like fragility in her slight frame was cancelled by the rigid way she would stand. Alert, and while softly spoken, there was a certain aloofness in her manner. 

"I recall a piercing blue eyed stare. Unnerving and a bit emotionless. "

"Well it softened for Toria. Let me finish!"

"By now our main courses are really late. The starter an hour ago and Hermione is properly hammered. As I'm interrogating her on the Trunchball thing, she admits her tastes had matured more towards MILFs nowadays, namely" and she looks at her mother pointedly praying she takes the hint. 

As the colour rises around Serena's décolletage, Bernie let's out her huge honking laugh and claps Serena on the shoulder. 

"She has very fine taste." Bernie grins in amusement and at her and her own good fortune. 

"So you can imagine how she reacted when I told her about you two." Ellie finishes her tale and her glass in tandem. 

Then as a denouement, she scrabbles amongst the contents of her handbag. Out of it, she removes an over-stuffed purse and slides a light blue business card from its pocket. 

Bernie snatches it up before Serena can reach out. Her eyebrows furrow in concentration and then something more sinister as she reads. "Oh. It is SO on."

"That is mine, thank you very much". Serena counters and when she reads the card and the handwritten message on the back, she finally speaks. 

"Well I'm terrifically flattered but I don't think I'll take her up on the offer any time soon."

Bernie harrumphs something, outwith of Serena's hearing, about how tanks have RPGs and their potential uses. And then, speaking more clearly, "you know your mother might have a type. "

Bernie gets side-swiped by Serena as they walk through to the sitting room and she sets about the task of lighting the fire in penance. As Bernie kneels over the kindling, Serena places her self on the sofa in an optimum position to ogle her girlfriend and reminisces, 

"In my day at St Winifred's, there used to be a boarding house and the rumour was that one of the boarders in sixth form was having a clandestine relationship with the female art teacher, who, in turn, was seeing the classics mistress."

"Ooh. That does sound a bit torrid and scandalous for the Edwardian era Mummy". 

"Ha ha." Serena responds sarcastically. "I only knew as my best friend shared a dorm with the said boarder who kept leaving her room at all hours of the night."

"The best bit was that the boarder was the only girl doing Latin A level."

"Wow that's awkward. Sitting in tutorial with your lover's girlfriend." comments Ellie

"And trying to remember how to conjugate 'amo, amas, amat.' in all its tenses. Yikes" wonders Bernie. 

"And translating all the repressed jealousy in the poems of Catullus to Lesbia," concedes Serena, then she smirks before reciting,

>   
> " _da mi basia mille, deinde centum,_  
>  dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,  
> deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.  
> dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,  
> conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus,  
> aut ne quis malus inuidere possit,  
> cum tantum sciat esse basiorum."

*

"Can't understand a word but it sounds pervy, Mum". 

"More romantic and sensual," sighs her mother. 

It wasn't until the morning when Jason came down that Serena remembered the card. He was twisting it between his fingers while eating his cereal. (Monday, so shreddies). He speaks aloud, deep in thought. 

"Aunty Serena," he pronounces. "I don't think this is possible. It would require months of training and authorisation."

"What darling?" says Serena eyeing the card with some trepidation. 

"Squadron Leader Hatfield asking you to co-pilot or as she puts it, 'try Mach One with her'"

"Yes, well, Jason, I think she might have meant it figuratively."

"How?"

"Um, yes, well... Is that the time? Can't be late for work." hedges Serena. 

At this Jason protests, "But we're only seven minutes into our fifteen minute breakfast time". We do not need leave the house until 8:21 at the very latest." 

Ellie giggles into her cup of coffee. She had tucked herself into the snug bench and was in her pyjamas and dressing gown, laptop in front of her on the kitchen table. She rested her chin on her hand and looked at their pair, 

"Jason?" 

"Yes, Ellie?"

"Please don't ever change."

"Oh and Bernie" calls out Ellie. 

Bernie stumbles into the kitchen dishevelled, trying to tuck in her blue blouse while still holding her belt and socks. 

"Aren't you a little afraid that someone so young could be of equivalent rank." Ellie puts the question innocently enough. 

"Different services, like comparing apples to oranges," she retorts. "And, why are we still discussing that air jock? Because, she can frankly Alpha Mike Foxtrot."

"Whatever you say Major?" As she turns back to the screen, smiling to herself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Catullus poem five. Let us live and love, Lesbia. Known by lots of posho girls school attendees in the 1970 and 80s and prior. Roughly translated 
>
>> Give me a thousand kisses  
>  And then a hundred  
> Then another thousand  
> Then a following hundred  
> Even yet a thousand more  
> Then a hundred  
> And when we have made many thousands  
> Let us muddled them all up  
> So that those who wish ill of us  
> Are unable to know  
> Just how many kisses there are.  
> 


End file.
